Scouts from Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, AC Milan and Barcelona have of course all come to see Romelu play at Anderlecht. In Brussels last week it was reported that Chelsea have offered Anderlecht €10million and a one-year loan-back agreement.

This was described at Anderlecht’s Stade Constant Vanden Stock on Friday night as ‘an informal offer’, the sort of conversation that begins: ‘What about if we . . . ?’

more on the sensational kid and some video after the jump….

Anderlecht declined, just as they have to every other proposition so far, a stance that should be rewarded in the future when Lukaku leaves a club and a league whose skin he already looks big enough to shed.

Chelsea’s interest is undisputed and they may benefit from Lukaku’s fondness for Drogba.

‘When we play on our PlayStation, I am Milan and he is Chelsea,’ one of Lukaku’s school friends recently told a Belgian sports magazine.  Lukaku has eight goals in his first four months as a professional and he copies a lot of Drogba’s game, from the way he stands, arms slightly off his hips like a gunslinger, to the look-to-the-sky goal celebrations, or the chest thump.

Like Drogba, Lukaku has two good feet and spins with his back to goal. In the long run that will matter more than precocious strength.

On Friday night, against the weak challenge of KV Kortrijk, Lukaku would have made it six consecutive scoring appearances had his 58th-minute header not been ruled offside, a marginal decision. A touchline banner proclaimed ‘Brussels Dynamite’.

Tony Adams may have seen it. He watched Lukaku last month, reportedly taking notes only when the teenager had the ball. Adams was on Arsenal scouting duty.

Manchester United, who still have a strong connection with Royal Antwerp in the Belgian second division, presumably knew early on about Lukaku, who was born in Antwerp.

His father, Roger, had been a player with Mechelen and has claimed privately that earlier this year an English and an Italian club tried to sign Lukaku aged 15. In Belgium, boys cannot sign professionally until they are 16 so this would have meant no transfer fee.

Lukaku signed a five-year contract, with a clause that says after three years he can review the last two. That would take him to May 2012 at Anderlecht, when he would be 19, and his father seems determined that he should at least reach his 18th birthday in Brussels. ‘Other clubs can make as many offers as they want, my son is going to finish school,’ Lukaku Snr said recently.
‘That’s another 18 months. I’m going mad with all these managers calling me about my son. I tell them, “It makes no sense. He’s going nowhere”.’

As if to emphasise Lukaku’s youth, a timetable of his next month has been revealed showing 10 days of exams, beginning on Monday morning. Yet Lukaku plays for Anderlecht at Bruges on Sunday night, one of eight matches before the winter break. Anderlecht are top, Bruges second.

‘It’s no problem, he’s in a routine,’ his father said.

With Anderlecht’s knowledge, two of the courses Lukaku Jnr is studying are languages: English and Spanish. There is economic realism in another of those leagues impoverished in part by UEFA’s introduction of the expanded Champions League a decade ago.

source, image via daylife

ps, if this kid just turned 16, I’m 8 feet tall (kidding of course)